One of the most dynamic, exciting and innovative artists working in Britain today, Bruce McLean has spent more than fifty years redefining the boundaries of sculpture, painting and performance. The Paragon Gallery is delighted to announce the arrival of a brand new collection of monoprints and originals works, alongside some of his most significant original prints in recent times. This body of work will be on display from 16th August until 7th September, opening with a Private View evening on Thursday 15th August 5.30 - 8pm. View McLean’s exhibition collection HERE.

McLean’s work challenges the formal aesthetics and hierarchies of traditional media, using parody, biting wit and a pronounced sense of play to confuse established ideas of what art can be and how the audience should respond to it. He describes himself as an “action sculptor” and infuses his work with a self-professed love and aptitude for dance. The sculptural properties of gesture and movement are pivotal; “I don’t think of what I do as art,” he says. “I think of it as sculpture. Even if it’s a painting, it’s a painting I made as a sculptor”.

 Born in 1944 in Glasgow, McLean studied at the Glasgow School of Art and then under Sir Anthony Caro and Phillip King at St. Martin’s School of Art in London. He was encouraged to question and be sceptical of the nature of sculpture, and responded by creating work out of rubbish, water and other impermanent materials. He also used his own body to create action sculptures and impersonate those of other artists.

The subject of an audacious one-day retrospective at the Tate gallery at the age of 27, he continues to exhibit widely throughout the world. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Tate, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, among others. 

“Dark Spring with Blossom”, Monoprint, Hand-Painted Collaged Silkscreen on Paper